1st Grade ELA (Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks)

Reading: Literature (RL)

• RL.1.1 Ask and answer questions about important details in a story or poem.
• RL.1.2 Retell stories with key details and show you understand their central message or lesson.
• RL.1.3 Describe a story's characters, setting and big events using key details.
• RL.1.4 Find words in stories or poems that hint at feelings or appeal to the senses.
• RL.1.5 Name features of common story types, including folktales and fairy tales.
• RL.1.6 Say who is telling the story at different points.
• RL.1.7 Use pictures and details to describe a story's characters, setting or events.
• RL.1.9 Compare what characters do and experience in different stories.
• RL.1.10 With help, read and understand grade 1 stories and poems from many genres, cultures and perspectives.

Reading: Informational Text (RI)

• RI.1.1 Ask and answer questions about important details in an informational text.
• RI.1.2 Say what a text is mainly about and retell its key details.
• RI.1.3 Describe how two people, events, ideas or facts in a text are connected.
• RI.1.4 Ask and answer questions to work out what words and phrases in a text mean.
• RI.1.5 Use text features such as headings, contents pages, glossaries and icons to find key facts.
• RI.1.6 Tell apart what the pictures show and what the words say.
• RI.1.7 Describe a text's key ideas using its pictures and details.
• RI.1.8 Find the reasons an author gives for points in a text.
• RI.1.9 Find simple likenesses and differences between two texts on one topic.
• RI.1.10 With help, read and understand informational texts suited to grade 1.

Reading: Foundational Skills (RF)

• RF.1.1 Show understanding of how print is organized.
  • a. Recognize what makes a sentence: first word, capital letter, end punctuation.
• RF.1.2 Show understanding of spoken words, syllables and sounds.
  • a. Hear the difference between long and short vowels in one-syllable words.
  • b. Blend sounds, including consonant blends, to say one-syllable words.
  • c. Pick out and say the first sound, middle vowel and last sound of one-syllable words.
  • d. Break one-syllable words into all of their separate sounds.
• RF.1.3 Know and use grade 1 phonics and word analysis to read words.
  • a. Know the sounds of common consonant digraphs (two letters, one sound).
  • b. Read regular one-syllable words.
  • c. Know final -e and common vowel teams that spell long vowel sounds.
  • d. Use the rule that every syllable has a vowel sound to count syllables in a written word.
  • e. Read two-syllable words by splitting them into syllables.
  • f. Read words with endings such as -s, -ed and -ing.
  • g. Recognize and read grade 1 words with irregular spellings.
• RF.1.4 Read accurately and fluently enough to understand the text.
  • a. Read grade 1 texts with a purpose and with understanding.
  • b. Read aloud accurately, at a suitable pace and with expression over repeated readings.
  • c. Use context to check or self-correct word reading, rereading if needed.

Writing (W)

• W.1.1 Write opinion pieces that name the topic or book, give an opinion and a reason, and close.
• W.1.2 Write informative texts that name a topic, give some facts and close.
• W.1.3 Write narratives in prose or poems that tell two or more events in order with details, time words and an ending.
  • a. In poems, use rhymes and repeated long or short vowel sounds to give structure.
• W.1.4 Produce writing whose development and organization fit the task, purpose and reader.
• W.1.5 With adult help, stay on a topic, respond to classmates' questions and suggestions and add details.
  • b. Choose and use suitable vocabulary up to grade 1 level.
• W.1.6 With adult help, try digital tools to make and share writing, sometimes with classmates.
• W.1.7 Join shared research and writing projects, e.g. reading how-to books and writing a set of steps.
• W.1.8 With adult help, recall experiences or gather information from given sources to answer a question.
• W.1.10 Write regularly for different tasks, purposes and readers.

Speaking and Listening (SL)

• SL.1.1 Join group conversations with different partners about grade 1 topics and texts.
  • a. Follow agreed rules such as listening carefully and speaking one at a time.
  • b. Build on others' talk by replying to their comments over several exchanges.
  • c. Ask questions to clear up confusion about the topic or text.
• SL.1.2 Ask and answer questions about key details of a read-aloud text or information in other media.
• SL.1.3 Ask and answer questions about a speaker's words to learn more or clear up confusion.
• SL.1.4 Describe people, places, things and events with useful details, sharing ideas and feelings clearly with suitable words.
• SL.1.5 Add drawings or visuals to descriptions when they help show ideas and feelings.
• SL.1.6 Speak in complete sentences when the task and situation call for it.

Language (L)

• L.1.1 Use standard English grammar and usage in writing and speaking, keeping earlier skills.
  • a. Say and write simple and compound sentences and expand them.
  • b. Know that a question is a kind of sentence.
  • c. Use singular and plural nouns with verbs that match.
  • d. Use verbs to show past, present and future.
  • e. Use common, proper and possessive nouns.
  • f. Use personal, possessive and indefinite pronouns.
  • g. Use common prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and articles.
• L.1.2 Use standard English capitals, punctuation and spelling when writing.
  • a. Print all capital and lowercase letters clearly.
  • b. Put punctuation at the end of sentences.
  • c. Capitalize the names of months and people.
  • d. Use commas in dates and between single words in a list.
  • e. Spell words with common patterns and common irregular words correctly.
  • f. Spell untaught words by their sounds using spelling rules.
  • g. Write numerals to 120, know numbers can be written as words, and write the words one to ten.
• L.1.4 Figure out what unfamiliar words and words with several meanings mean, choosing from a range of strategies.
  • a. Use the sentence as a clue to a word's meaning.
  • b. Use common prefixes and suffixes as clues.
  • c. Spot common root words and their endings (look, looks, looked, looking).
• L.1.5 With adult help, show understanding of how words relate and differ slightly in meaning.
  • a. Sort words into groups (colors, clothing) to understand categories.
  • b. Define words by category and a key feature (a duck is a bird that swims).
  • c. Link words to real life (e.g. places at home that are cozy).
  • d. Tell apart verbs of manner (peek, stare) and adjectives of strength (large, gigantic) by defining, choosing or acting them out.
• L.1.6 Use words learned through talk, activities, reading and being read to, including joining words such as because.